To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
by Sakura Tsukikage
Summary: Fear is far from rational, and sometimes we fear, no matter how tough we are. If a warrior doesn't fear war, then what does he fear? The subject comes up between Heero and Duo. Set during Gundam Wing Episode 19.


**A/N: **Part of this fic takes place during Gundam Wing Episode 19 (well, actually all of it, but some of it is actually a scene in the episode), but as I was unable to actually watch Gundam Wing while I was writing this, I had to go off of memory alone. It's as accurate as I can make it, but I probably forgot stuff, so I apologize for any inaccuracies. I tried a kind of stream-of-consciousness feel with this fic, so I just hope it sounds like Duo. Also, Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai/Sunrise/Asahi, so on and so forth, and in general to people other than me. So yeah, not mine.

**To Sleep, Perchance to Dream**

To die, to sleep;  
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:  
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,  
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil..."

-- William Shakespeare, _Hamlet, _Act 3 Scene 1.

A God of Death shouldn't mind the dark, but the fact was he did. Not the dark of space, spinning out in endless depth strewn with bits of light or the quiet outside nights of Earth, soft and shadowy and lit with the gentle radiance of the moon, but the tight, stifling darkness of night on the colonies and the chill flat dark of climate-controlled rooms. Darkness on the streets where he'd been a child had been full of danger where monsters lurked just waiting to eat boys like him, and he didn't know what would happen if he let himself fall asleep, if he'd die before he woke or if he'd see another morning. One night, Death had come for the boy sleeping beside him, his small hot feverish body curled up at Duo's back, and when Duo had blinked sleep out of his eyes and turned to check on the other boy, Solo's body had been cold and he'd never woken again. In the world of Duo's childhood, the dark was full of bad things.

The room they'd thrown him in was dark, dark and cold and so small he felt as if the walls were pressing in on his skin, about to crush the life out of him, and his eyes were wide and straining and seeing nothing but black, but he couldn't close them, he couldn't, because then he'd just be inviting the darkness in. He'd never thought of himself as claustrophobic before—he was a pilot after all, he spent most of his life cooped up in cockpits, which weren't exactly roomy—but somehow it was different in this tiny cold little room with air so icy he could barely stand to breathe it, and he couldn't see any way out. Couldn't see anything at all. So he just sat there, shivering and hurting because his whole body was battered and bruised and felt broken, no matter how often he told himself just to tough it out, because he was a Gundam pilot and the God of Death and it really wasn't that bad, and tried too hard to ignore the cold of the chains around his wrists. He didn't know why he was trying so hard, when they were just going to kill him anyway, but he couldn't seem to help it. This was just the way he was, Duo thought, and even in the dark his mouth twisted into his usual smile. Maybe it was dumb, but it made him feel a little better.

A little.

But he was here, alone in the dark, and nothing could really change that. He wondered if they would torture him to try and get more information out of him first or if the next person he would see would be his executioner. He couldn't help shivering at the thought. No matter what, Duo really hadn't imagined himself dying like this. He'd thought he'd go out in battle, not executed as a symbol of what would happen to those who resisted OZ by the very people he fought for. The thought made him want to puke.

It really had been stupid to get himself captured like this. Unforgivably stupid for a Gundam pilot. The others would be disgusted, he thought, unable to keep misery from leaking into his thoughts from where he'd been trying to keep it locked away in the back of his mind. It couldn't affect him, couldn't drag him down, locked up there. But they would be—this was pathetic. He could just imagine Heero's face, his monotone voice telling him how stupid he had been, how much he deserved to die for screwing up like this. And he did. That was what being a Gundam pilot meant, after all, that no one would be sad if you died, that it was your job to die.

That was kind of why Duo had wanted to be one. It wasn't as if he'd had anything to lose in the first place.

Wufei would tell him that he had been weak, he thought. Trowa probably wouldn't say anything at all, but he would agree that by getting captured Duo had made himself into a liability, he was sure. Quatre would be disappointed and upset, but even he would agree that Duo getting himself captured was nothing but trouble and it was better just to get rid of him rather than let OZ execute him.

Ah, he thought, this wasn't helping anyone. And the worst part was, nothing he could do would help anyone anymore. The only thing he could do to help was not tell anyone anything and die in silence. Wasn't it?

It was so dark. The wall was cold behind him and chill seeped up his legs, soaking it up from the floor. Duo fought to keep his eyes open, but it was hard. He was tired and aching and so much of him was beaten.

But he couldn't lose, not to them. Not like this.

So dark, and there were darker spots dancing across his eyes like black nebulas sucking up everything around them. He tried to blink them away, but it didn't work. His breathing sounded unnaturally loud in his ears, hoarse, scratchy, and he couldn't make it even, even as his straining for breath he really didn't need so much of made his chest hurt. He was hyperventilating, the rational part of his mind told him. He was panicking, and he needed to stop.

For some reason, that part of his mind sounded a lot like Heero's expressionless voice. The thought made him laugh, and it sounded too high-pitched, echoing in the darkness, more than a little hysterical.

Duo made himself take a deep breath. There was no reason to panic. Just because it was dark and cold and he was going to die—what was so bad about that? It was only what he'd been expecting since he agreed to pilot Deathscythe, after all. He took another deep breath and leaned his head back against the cold metal of the wall behind him. He needed to be tougher than this. Hell, how much longer could it be? He swallowed hard, even though it choked in his throat. But he wasn't going to spend the last . . . however long of his life panicking like an idiot. He was better than _that_, anyway. Even if it was dark.

He rocked back on his heels a bit, trying to shift his weight into a more comfortable position. His feet were starting to go numb; his fingers already frozen into unfeeling cold. He tried to flex them and wasn't sure if he'd succeeded or not. Oh, well. Where he was going he didn't need to feel his fingers, right? Duo gave a wry chuckle at that, and it was less hysterical, at least. Maybe a little sad, and not at all up to his usual standard, but not hysterical.

Damn, it was cold.

Against all the odds, he thought he slipped into sleep. He was pretty sure he wasn't taking in new information there for a while, anyway, not that there was anything new to take in. He wasn't sure how long it lasted—he wasn't even sure how long he'd been in that tiny box of a cell—but he woke terrified and shaking and dripping with cold sweat and freezing right through his bones, sure that he was going to die in just a few moments, because he'd dreamed of there being something there in the dark with him, grabbing his numb feet and dragging him after it, still bound and helpless and unable to fight, like one of the predators, most more human-shaped than not, who had haunted the streets of his childhood. It took him a long time to steady his breathing, even longer to believe that there wasn't something there, in the dark where he couldn't see, that would come for him as soon as he closed his eyes.

Finally he managed a full deep breath, but his eyes were still wide and straining in the darkness and he couldn't quite persuade himself to close them. He tried closing one and then the other, and then, when nothing happened, he pressed them both shut for a moment, telling himself that nothing would happen, there was nothing there, it had just been a dream.

He was alone in there.

Sure enough, nothing sprang out of the darkness at him, nothing even touched him. He sighed and blew out his breath. How much longer would he have to wait? What were they waiting for, anyway? He knew they'd already made the decision to kill him; they'd have had to be morons not to. Unless they wanted to try to coerce him into flying for them, but that wasn't going to happen, so it was death sooner or later. Though they didn't really need him to fly Deathscythe. Assuming they could repair it, which he kind of doubted.

Damn it, he'd really screwed up this time, he really had. He wondered if one of the others would have to clean up after him, and winced. He should have tried harder. They all had enough to worry about without him being a burden on them as well. Duo tugged half-heartedly on the chains encircling his wrists, but it was nothing but a gesture, and he knew it. He was in no shape to get himself out of there, even if he could get himself free of the chains and the cell. Heero or Wufei might have able to just yank the chains right out of the wall, but he was no crazy hard-ass like them. He was just a street kid turned damn good pilot, and none of that was going to help him now. He sighed and let himself sag back. The chains were heavy and cold, cutting painfully into his wrists. He flinched a little but didn't bother to change his position. His wrists were already so bruised and battered that he was surprised he could still feel it, and in a few days or so it wasn't going to matter much.

It was so damn dark. Duo bit down hard on his bottom lip and told himself that he was being a big baby.

But it really was dark. And he really did hate the dark.

------ transmission interrupted ------

At first when he saw Heero he'd thought he was hallucinating. Thought however long it had been there in the dark, alone and cold and hurting, it had been too long and he'd finally slipped over the edge without even noticing. But even when he dug his nails into the palm of his hand until he felt the dull ache of pain through the numbness and blood welling up under them Heero didn't disappear, so he figured he was real.

Which made just as much sense, actually, especially since Heero was pointing a gun at him, and Heero and guns just went together. And he'd kind of expected Heero to show up and kill him ever since he'd been captured. It would be just like Heero to do that sort of thing. He was pretty relieved, to tell the truth. Being killed by Heero wasn't half as bad as dying in whatever kind of execution they'd have set up for him. Not bad at all. Better than most ways he could think of to die. At least he knew that Heero would make it quick and clean, because everything he did was as perfect and professional as inhumanly possible.

So Duo grinned and gave him the go-ahead and tilted his head back and waited to die, a little bit surprised at the relief he felt and the lack of bitterness knowing that Heero's expressionless face would be the last thing he'd ever see. He didn't even wince at the soft whistle of the silenced gunshot.

He started, though, when he felt the metal around his wrist jerk and fall away. The other followed a moment later after another woosh of air, and Duo brought his head up to stare at Heero, eyes wide, hardly daring to breathe now that it seemed he'd be able to continue that activity for a bit longer.

Heero just lowered the gun.

Finally Duo managed to force something out of his mouth—his lips were cracked and bleeding, and how had he not noticed that till now? "You are going to do it, right?" he said. He sounded uncertain, he thought. Hell, he was. He would have told anyone confidently that if he ever saw the boy codenamed Heero Yuy in a situation like this, Heero would kill him without a second thought.

Heero looked at him for a moment more, then said gravely, "Only if you wish."

Hell of a thing to say. Duo gave a wavering, uncertain chuckle and felt his eyes slip down, to the side, away from Heero's face. He should tell Heero just to shoot him, he thought. He should. He deserved it.

He didn't realize he was sliding down the wall and halfway to falling on his ass until Heero took a few quick steps forward and shoved his shoulder under Duo's arm, dragging him up to his feet as he straightened. "You can use your right hand, can't you?" he said, all business.

Duo nodded, and Heero pressed a gun into it, curling his fingers around the trigger when they were slow to respond on their own.

"How's your Gundam?" Duo asked after a moment, finally managing to kick-start his brain into some kind of forward momentum. Heero started forward, and he barely got his legs to move to keep up. After he started moving, though his muscles seemed to remember how to do it, and it got easier.

"I left it on Earth," Heero said. "It's burdensome in space." They were to the doorway now. Heero keyed the door open quickly and they edged out into the hallway. Duo noticed with a grin that they both instinctively scanned the corridor for threats.

"I see," he said, "then how are we going to get out of here?"

"My purpose here was to kill you," Heero said, that tone in his voice that said more clearly than any words could have, _Duo Maxwell, now would be a good time to think about shutting up_. "I didn't plan on escaping."

And that was just so Heero Duo had to laugh. "If we fail?"

Heero didn't even shrug. "Then two mouths will be silenced." His hand tightened almost imperceptibly on Duo's shoulder, in what he would have thought of as a reassuring squeeze if it had been anyone else. Heero, the perfect soldier, wouldn't have said it even if he'd actually known how, but Duo understood the words nonetheless—_but we won't fail_.

For a hard-ass, inhuman idiot of a super-soldier, Heero was a good friend. "Lead on, then, oh fearless leader," Duo said, gesturing expansively with his gun-holding hand. "I follow."

Heero gave him another look out of the corner of his eyes—this one was the _I so don't get you_ look (Duo had them all labeled and was thinking about writing a codebook for the other Gundam pilots)—but didn't say anything, only dragging Duo further down the corridor.

It wasn't easy, keeping up with Heero in the shape he was in, but through some bizarre cocktail of adrenaline and desperation and just plain relief, he managed it, even though the muscles from his ankles up his legs were tight, aching bundles of agony from staying forcibly bent and still for so long, and just moving took so much effort that before long sweat was running down into his eyes, burning and scratchy, slicking his back between his shoulder blades and the back of his neck and soaking his shirt and the soft cloth of his socks, and his arms hurt like all hell. Heero, though, wouldn't let him so much as think about falling too far behind, and somehow that helped, even when that meant a steely hand fisted in his collar yanking him after the other boy. He wasn't going to complain, not when Heero was the one getting him out of there when he never thought he'd see a free day again.

They were in a shuttle making their escape before he got a chance to say, hating how shaky his voice still sounded, "Hey, Heero . . . thanks."

Heero just blinked at him. "For what?" he asked. Completely deadpan, of course, as usual.

Sometimes Duo wondered if _anyone _could really be that clueless, or if Heero was just faking it. "I don't know," he said, leaning over, out of his chair, to prop his elbow on Heero's side of the cockpit, "but I thought, hey, my life doesn't get saved every day, and I was pretty sure I was going to die before you showed up, so maybe I'd say something, you know?'

Heero looked at him, one hand moving absently over the shuttle's controls. After a long moment, he blinked again, and said, "You could not be left there to give them information, in the event of torture."

Duo wasn't if sure if the anger that choked his throat was from annoyance or hurt, that Heero thought he was that weak, though he supposed he couldn't blame him. He sagged back into his own chair. "Are you saying I would've talked?" he said, trying to play it off light, as usual.

Heero's brows drew together a little, the way they did when he _really _wasn't following what Duo was talking about or why he was acting the way he was. "I'm saying I didn't want to risk it," he said. "Why would I want you to go through that, when I was here and could prevent it?"

Duo stared as Heero turned back to his controls, because not only was that a long speech from Heero, it was positively _sappy_. "Heero," he said, and it was supposed to sound as sarcastic and lighthearted as he usually did, but he didn't think he quite managed it, "and here I was thinking you didn't care."

"Duo," Heero said. "Shut up." Heero's hand, the one that wasn't engaged in controlling the shuttle at the moment, came to grab Duo's hair and tug gently on the braid. Duo could feel his mouth drop open at the gesture, friendly, hell, even tender for Heero. A moment passed, and the other boy added, "Get some sleep."

Duo closed his mouth. Even he could tell when a conversation was over. Well, sometimes.

And he was tired. So he closed his eyes, snuggled down in the chair, and tried to find a position that didn't hurt. "Wake me when we get there," he said lazily.

------ transmission interrupted -------

In the end, though, he woke himself. He'd thought it would be okay. He'd gone to sleep while the lights were on and everything, and it hadn't been hard to doze off despite the half a million aches and brand new pains making themselves known all over his body, but apparently his damn subconscious could tell the minute the shuttle went from dim half-lighting to shadowy darkness and wasn't shy about informing the rest of him.

He woke shaking and scared in the dark and for a moment wasn't sure where he was—back there in his cell, or in the shadowy streets of his childhood, or even in the wreckage of Father Maxwell's church where he'd spent one miserable night wedged under rubble, not sure if he wanted to make the effort to live before the relief workers had come and dragged him out into too-bright morning light, or maybe just someplace people like him went when they finally got what they deserved. He thought maybe he'd been dreaming, though he couldn't remember about what, but he was shaking and sweaty and cold, and that usually meant he'd been having a nightmare.

His hands flailed out and hit the smooth but rough surface of a console covered with buttons, bounced off and hit the cool edges of his chair, and memory began to return. He wasn't in his cell anymore, he wasn't on the streets, and he was pretty sure he wasn't dead. Heero had gotten him out of there. He had, right?

Goddamnit, his stomach hurt. Duo propped his head on his hand and swallowed hard and told himself that no, really, he didn't have to hurl.

He could still feel the chains on his wrists, and it took rubbing them with his fingers to reassure himself that they were gone, despite all the bruises that hurt when he touched them and the ridged boniness that made Duo think that yeah, he was still a street kid after all. He'd lost that for a while, going to school and pretending to be normal. For a while his wrists had been rounded, covered in healthy flesh, not just a thin layer of wiry muscle drawn flat over bone. When had he gotten so damn skinny again?

His breath was still coming too quick and light, and his chest hurt.

The lights suddenly flickered on, flooding the small cockpit of the shuttle with light that made Duo screw his eyes nearly shut, tears welling in them at the sudden brightness. He blinked them back and dared to pry his eyes open a little more. "What the hell—?" he started.

"That's my line," Heero said. "You okay?"

What the hell could he say to that? Yeah, of course, don't mind me, I'm just freaking out over here in the corner, perfectly normal, don't trouble yourself. ". . . Fine," Duo croaked out. "I'm fine." He took a deep breath, swallowed. His lips were still dry and cracked, and his mouth felt like it was full of sawdust. "What are you doing back there?"

"I was finding us somewhere to go," Heero said. "You need medical attention. I got back a while ago. I didn't want to wake you, but then you started flailing around."

Duo could feel his face flush hot. Wow, that was sure impressive. He could only imagine what Heero'd thought of that one. "I aim to entertain," he said, his usual flippant tone an effort.

There was silence for a long moment, and then Heero said, sounding slightly more annoyed and maybe a little puzzled than expressionless, "Nightmares aren't entertaining, Duo."

_They are when they're this stupid_, Duo thought, half-wishing it was still dark enough to hide his humiliated flush. He looked away from Heero, staring out the front viewscreen of the shuttle. "No," he said. "I guess they're not."

There was a long silence. _God, this is pathetic, _Duo's mind informed him. _First you get yourself captured and beaten and don't even bother to kill yourself, making him come rescue you—_rescue _you, Duo, come on!—then you're pretty much no help at all getting out, sleep for who knows how long, only to start flailing around in your sleep and nightmaring so badly Heero Yuy the Clueless Commando notices. And now you can't even look him in the face you're so embarrassed about being an idiot. Duo Maxwell, what the hell is wrong with you?_

"Are you under the impression," Heero said suddenly, startling Duo, who hadn't been sure he was still back there, "that I never have nightmares, or something?"

Actually, he kind of had been. Even though that was obviously ridiculous. Heero was just as human as he was, no matter how hard he tried to forget it. Just as young. Just, Duo thought, as broken. Maybe more so. Of course he had nightmares. But . . . still, that was different. Heero had plenty of things to have pretty damn hellish nightmares about, Duo was sure. And Duo had some good ones, too, but it wasn't the faces of Sister Helen and Father Maxwell and Solo who haunted his dreams. It was other things, stupid things, things that only babies were scared of.

"Not because you're afraid of the damn dark!" he said hotly, and his voice broke halfway through the sentence, and damn, that was pathetic. _He_ was pathetic. And he didn't know what the hell was wrong with him, and his throat hurt, and there was a weird hot prickling behind his eyes. He tried to banish it by blinking fast and hard, and he almost succeeded.

"I have nightmares about teddy bears," Heero said in response, his voice distant. "And flowers, and a little girl and her dog. What triggers them isn't important." Duo got the distinct impression he was looking over at him but steadfastly refused to look back, moronic as that was. "It's just part of who we are."

Duo took a long, deep breath and finally succeeded in blinking the tears back out of his eyes. "I'm being stupid," he said. "Aren't I?"

"Yeah," Heero said.

Well, that was Heero for you. Not one to skirt around the painful truth. Duo let out a shaky laugh. "Yeah," he said. "I kind of thought I was."

"Not because of the reasons you think," Heero said. There was a short pause and then he said, sounding baffled, "Duo, why won't you look at me?"

Duo tried not to lose his temper, he really did, and he didn't want to, because Heero probably really was as clueless as he sounded, but he ended up twisting around to look Heero in the face and snarling, "Why the hell do you think?" It was just too much, and he couldn't admit to Heero how humiliating all this was, and Heero didn't deserve to have Duo's problems shoved on him, too, because Heero had enough problems, and Duo's were nothing compared to his. They were stupid, unworthy, not worth losing control and freaking out like this, but he couldn't seem to help it.

Heero looked blankly back at him from where he stood in the back of the shuttle and seemed to really be thinking about his question, though it was hard to tell what was going on behind that impassive face. "You are ashamed of being captured," he said. "But I don't understand why. I have been taken captive before. It is simply one outcome of battle. You could not avoid it. There is no shame in your actions. It didn't happen because of a lack of skill on your part."

"Didn't it?" Duo demanded. "You wouldn't have been captured like that, would you? You would have self-destructed, or—or found some way to break out, or killed yourself rather than let them question you, or—or done _something_, damn it, something more than I did." He realized he was gesturing rather dramatically and balled his hands into fists and stuck them stubbornly in his pockets.

Heero pushed himself away from the wall. "I thought you didn't want to be like me," he said, and took the several steps necessary to cross the shuttle to Duo's side. "I thought you thought I was an inhuman monster."

"Well, yeah," Duo said, "you are, but if I'm going to be a monster, the least I can do is be _good _at it!"

Heero made a face, his mouth twisting downward in something that wasn't quite a frown but certainly wasn't a smile, and reached to brush the knuckles of his hand back over Duo's head, to tap them against the base of his skull, his fingers skimming the back of Duo's neck, as if to say, _stop being an idiot, Maxwell. It's all right, I understand, and it's all right._ "You do fine the way you are," he said. "It's better that not all the Gundam pilots are like me. There are a lot of things you can do that I can't."

"Like what?" Duo demanded.

Heero shrugged, and it was his turn to look away, out the viewport. "Like talk to people," he said. "You're better at infiltration than I am. You can look . . . inconspicuous, while being . . . loud. I just stand out. It's . . . awkward."

Duo had to laugh at that. Heero had a point there—he was kind of shit at pretending to be anyone but janitors and so forth, people who weren't expected to talk.

"Besides," Heero said. "You rescued me once. Thought I might as well pay you back."

"Oh," Duo said. He'd forgotten about that. It seemed like a long time ago. "Yeah."

"Go back to sleep," Heero said. "I'll take you to the hospital in the morning; the paperwork's set up."

Duo didn't bother to ask how he'd pulled that one; Heero and computers were a magic combination that produced proper passcodes and documentation like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. "I—" he started, then stopped, because how was he supposed to ask Heero if he was going to leave the light on without sounding like a child?

"I'll leave the emergency light on," Heero said, of course, because when he had his weird flashes of insight sometimes Heero was positively eerie. "Will you go back to sleep, _bakayarou_?"

Heero didn't slip into Japanese very often. Hardly at all; he didn't have a trace of a Japanese accent—Duo would never have guessed the other boy was from L1 if he hadn't done some background research one time. And for him, calling someone an idiot in his native language was as affectionate as it ever got, except for to Relena, who was, in Duo's opinion at least, obviously a special case.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, turning back around in the chair and sliding back down into a comfortable position. "All right." He closed his eyes and waved a hand in Heero's vague direction. "Good night."

A hand rested on top of his head for just a second before disappearing, the transient weight and warmth somehow incredibly comforting. "Good night," came Heero's voice.

It was weird that talking with the Silent Super Soldier would have done anything at all to help him sleep, but Duo's sleep was uninterrupted by dreams after that.

------ transmission ended ------


End file.
